Interviewing for a job - are you ready?

[Mainly Mattias]

I can lose track of time reading articles. This one caught my eye to share.. Prob more of an OT topic but WN is a bit dead..

How I Hire: Stop Telling Me and Start Showing Me - Daniel S.

Most interviews go something like this…

• Tell me about a failure

• Tell me about a success

• Tell me about your dream job

• Tell me about…

Stop telling me, and start showing me!

I’ve hired hundreds of people over the past five years at LinkedIn. And I’ve learned that the best way to assess talent is to give a candidate 48 hours to complete a task that replicates the job they’re interviewing for.

We’ve implemented this concept for numerous roles: sales people do mock client meetings, marketers design marketing programs and analysts get problem sets that they must bring in to discuss. Guess what? It’s highly predictive of job competence... so much so that

for many roles we’ve made this the first interaction

so we don’t spend hours falling in love with candidates only to realize that they don’t nail the core job capability.

Here are some tips for creating a great “homework assignment.” Obviously different roles call for different needs, and the more senior the role, the more work it takes to craft the assignment. But here are some general best practices:

1) Ask a range of questions, some highly specific and some more open-ended. See if they can get the basic answer right, and whether they can deal with more vague issues.

• Specific:
  What characteristics would you use to define your target market?

• More General:
  As the business evolves, how would you expect your segmentation strategy and success criteria to change?

2) For junior roles, provide a very clear format in which they should deliver the answer. For senior roles, let them decide how to present their thinking and how to use the time with you to discuss the answer.

• Junior:
  Fill out this analysis table

• Senior:
  Assume you were to deliver the results on a weekly basis to a senior executive audience

3) Ask them to provide their answer in writing or via a presentation. For most jobs, you need to be able to communicate such that your work can stand on its own. Seeing what they produce is very enlightening.

4) Spend most of the time with them in person asking questions that you did not ask in the assignment. In an hour-long interview, perhaps 20 minutes should be spent discussing the answers themselves, while another 40 should be spent expanding the question.

• How would you take these insights and apply them across the business?

• What else do you think we should assess given these answers?

• What other data would you like to collect to refine your answer?

Perhaps one of the biggest insights I get from this process is understanding the level of preparation that the candidate feels is acceptable for such an assignment. Some people do incredible work that showcases the depth of their thinking and their commitment to answering the questions fully, including bringing in outside research. Others do little research and answer the questions at a cursory level.

If they don’t crush it when the job is on the line, they're not going to crush it every day...

which is what you really want.

By the way, a side benefit of this is that people get a real sense of what the work is like.

Most people who turn out to be stars LOVE this process because it's both challenging and reflects the kind of work that they inherently enjoy

. If they don't like the assignment, they probably won't love the job.

Of course, once you find someone who nails this, you need to continue your assessment on cultural fit, motivations, aspirations, etc. But this can be an incredibly helpful guidepost for you to hire amazing people consistently.

[Jägermeister]

Only job I've ever applied for required applicants to demonstrate their skills during a mass evaluation

I got the job.

[Go Faulk Yourself]

My most recent interview required me to meet this Union head at a pub and take an aptitude test. I passed the aptitude test 100%, just awaiting the phone call (I'm on a waiting list)

[etsen3]

Only job I've ever applied for required applicants to demonstrate their skills during a mass evaluation

I got the job.

[Mainly Mattias]

Good luck GFY, on being called.

I think the only times I did actual sit down 'tests' were for government jobs.. when you guys did 'tests' were they for government jobs?

-----------------------------

Re: Supervised paid shift.. yes, that is nice. shorter than a practicum and a probation period but still a good sample in evaluating the potential of an employee. Hard on the employer to spend time and money in training, supervising and doing payroll paperwork for multiple candidates. Good for the potential employee though!

[Mainly Mattias]

[Offensive Threat]

One interview I did they asked ridiculous questions like "If you were a rainbow, what colors would you be and why?" It was like a corporate meeting with some stoned hippies and Dr Seuss. I was asking them to repeat the questions each time and couldnt believe they were serious. If it was one or two like that I could see it as them just throwing a curveball to see how Id react but they were all like that. I ended up just walking out midsentance. Either they wanted to test how Id react to being jerked around or they were insane. I dont need either of those.

Remember, unless you are desperate, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.

[mbal23]

doing a Heisenberg or Steve Bennett impression, etsen?